Many large organizations, such as corporations, have invested substantial resources in the development of computer systems running on large mainframe computers. Many of these systems are legacy systems that are maintained for one or more reasons. For example, their replacement may be extremely expensive and/or cause a disruption of the business of the owner of such systems.
Many legacy systems utilize message format services wherein a transaction may be performed with the legacy system by sending the system a message comprising an ASCII (or EBCDIC) string which may contain, for example, a command word and one or more parameters for the transaction in question. In response to receiving such a command, a legacy system may generate an output transaction which may also typically comprise a command word and one or more parameters. Many of these systems do not contain modular architectures and are expensive to modify to provide additional functionality. In addition, the security for such systems often does not allow an easy method for allowing third party access to such systems in a secure manner. Creating an effective and dynamic interaction between legacy systems and various other applications may also be difficult and expensive due to the nature of these systems.